If we are serious about using academic research to achieve innovation and growth in industry, knowledge leadership is vital.

Governments around the world are striving to boost societal and economic impact from research investment by focusing on commercialising and scaling up research and innovation.

In the UK, research investment is seen as a way to boost science-led economic growth by scaling up research and innovation, including a £310m commitment to support the discovery, development and commercialisation of research in life sciences.

In Australia, too, the government announced a $1.1b research and innovation 'ideas boom' focused onexternal impact, rather than academic publication metrics.

However, translating research-based knowledge is difficult. Knowledge is ‘sticky’ and does not easily flow between people, places and industries – as we so often find across many organisational silos. This problem in ‘mobilising’ knowledge across university-industry boundaries means we fail to tap into a rich resource for solving the most challenging problems facing society today.

So how can we more effectively ‘unstick’ and mobilise research to make it more useful to society?

In an international collaboration led by Prof Sue Dopson from University of Oxford, Saïd Business School, with colleagues at King’s College London, Warwick Business School, and University of Melbourne, we investigated this question by studying how the most effective leaders use academic research to drive organisational innovation and change.

We investigated 137 senior managers in six of the leading organisations in the UK health industry over 30 months to explore which people and teams used research most effectively in these organisations. These included a global management consulting firm, policy think tank, university partnerships, and major teaching hospitals).

We then studied in depth how they used the research to drive significant organisational change.

"I really want to get a transformative way of working. In a sense you’re making problems for people … you just have to wait for them to calm down."

The most effective knowledge leaders skilfully activate research to create the momentum for organisational change. We found three different types of knowledge leadership to be effective.

Through transposing research, leaders act as carriers – they personally bring established research inside their organisation and enact it to create organisational change. For example, one senior doctor brought in research to redesign patient pathways through his hospital.

In appropriating research, leaders select and combine various research findings to reassemble findings inside their organisations. For example, one management consultant combined diverse research ideas and techniques to build a customised and persuasive model for creating organisational change.

By contending research, leaders select and challenge established research-based models as a way to drive innovation and alternative solutions. For example, a clinical director developed a community-led initiative, challenging a popular healthcare management model in his organisation, as a way to create innovative solutions to local problems.

Mobilising research is not easy. It can be like creating a mild inflammatory response to a flu jab, causing discomfort and side effects, even though it creates useful change.

But why do some individuals decide to mobilise knowledge in ways that create emotional reactions and can sometimes risk professional reputations and careers?

First, many of these knowledge leaders trace their motivation to formative experiences when they first became deeply engaged in research. A chief executive recalled his interest in research beginning as a child, influenced by his parents’ business. “I’d literally sit on the kitchen table and my father would explain it to me,” he says.

Second, knowledge leaders’ interest is shaped through postgraduate study (especially at Masters or PhD levels), often working with respected colleagues. This helps to build a meaningful connection to research-based ways of thinking. A policy expert reflected on the inspiring effect his PhD supervisor had in shaping his career. “A huge influence – he is still in my head, making me think about the independence of what I do and the rigour.”

Third, knowledge leaders typically have ‘hybrid’ identities – combining professional expertise and management roles. They are highly skilled at straddling disciplinary and organisational silos, and can cross pollinate from one field to another. A senior management consultant explained that he "steals something" from everyone he works with. As he puts it, he “nicks good ideas”.

Our research finds that knowledge leadership is hugely important in accelerating the flow of research across university and industry boundaries.

So what are the implications for companies and policymakers in developing more effective knowledge leaders?

1. CREATE OPPORTUNITIES FOR MUCH CLOSER COLLABORATION BETWEEN UNIVERSITIES AND INDUSTRY

Partnerships such as academic health science centres or industry growth centres are critical in stimulating the flow of people and research across boundaries.

Knowledge leadership works through mobilising individuals and teams to engage with research, and innovate and shift practices. But this work is often immensely challenging and needs support by senior management if it is to succeed.

3. IDENTIFY AND DEVELOP INDIVIDUALS SKILLED AT STRADDLING BOUNDARIES BETWEEN RESEARCH AND ORGANISATIONAL PRACTICE

My paper on mobilizing major institutional change won Best International Paper HCM award at the Academy of Management Conference 2015, Vancouver.

Based on our two-year case study of the development of a large, prestigious organisation in the UK - an Academic Health Science Centre - my co-authors and I explored how emotional engagement and values-based commitment amongst professionals helped create major organisational change.

For Dr Michael Fischer, the healthcare sector is an exemplar of complexity, where the traditional top-down approach to leadership doesn’t always work.

“Very often, when you speak to CEOs and managers, they talk about the complexity of structures, as if they were buildings. But when you move into an organisation, they don’t look like structures. They look like communities of people interacting with each other.”

Michael is the program director of Inspiring Healthcare Leaders, a new Melbourne Business School executive education program that is informed by his long experience in the UK as a clinician and researcher. >>

My executive development work with colleagues at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford has been recognised by winning the internationally prestigious EFMD 2015 Excellence in Practice Gold Award.

This award was for our custom design and delivery of a strategic leadership development programme for over 500 senior leaders in the UK's universal postal service. The executive development programme has had a huge impact upon performance of over 35%, increasing the Royal Mail Group's profits by 12%.

Michael D Fischer

Professor Michael D Fischer. Expert in the leadership and transformation of health care organizations. Business school social scientist, clinical psychotherapist and group analyst, Australian Catholic University and University of Oxford.